After an explosive meeting where a state-appointed board demanded to know the City of Industry’s plans for 2,450 acres of pristine land on the edge of Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties, the board’s questions have gone unanswered for months while the City of Industry’s $100 million offer sits on the table.

The oversight board tasked with approving the sale of the land has cancelled three meetings since January without any public notice. No date has been scheduled for its next meeting.

Environmental activists believe the delays are due to behind-the-scenes negotiations to make the deal more palatable to the suspicious board.

“It is a dance going on right now,” said Claire Schlotterbeck, co-founder of Hills for Everyone, which created the Chino Hills State Park and has been fighting for decades to preserve the Tres Hermanos Ranch.

Oversight board Vice Chairman Michael Gregoryk said the board was supposed to meet April 4 but the meeting was cancelled without an explanation at the last minute. It’s not unusual for the volunteer board to have trouble getting the required number of members to show up, Gregoryk said, but he isn’t given details when a meeting is cancelled. The board is made up of local officials from Los Angeles County, Mount San Antonio College, Hacienda La Puente Unified and Mountain View school districts.

“They don’t tell us who can or can’t show up,” Gregoryk said.

Paul Philips, Industry’s city manager and the city’s representative on the oversight board, said a board member was in the hospital and another was on vacation, making scheduling difficult.

The hope is to meet by the end of April or in early May.

“We’re ready to go,” Philips said.

Industry offered $41 million for Tres Hermanos Ranch, a pristine swath of undeveloped land in Diamond Bar and Chino Hills, in 2016, but the board rejected the offer because members felt the property wasn’t properly appraised. Industry then upped its bid by nearly 150 percent to $100 million on Jan. 13.

Industry’s former redevelopment agency has owned the land since 1978, but under the dissolution of redevelopment, the oversight board is tasked with liquidating the asset. Tres Hermanos would add to 3,300 adjacent acres previously purchased by Industry that run south through the undeveloped Tonner Canyon to Brea.

Industry has refused to say why it wants the nearly 6,000 acres of rolling hills and open plains. The City Council has said it would preserve the land for “public use and open space.”

Past proposals have included a series of reservoirs, a solar farm, or a hydro-electric facility, all of which would qualify as public use.

Councilman Abraham Cruz, in a letter filed to run for the election, acknowledged the idea for reservoirs, but said the city is not far enough along for anything to be concrete.

The oversight board on Jan. 23 refused to accept Industry’s offer until the city provided more details about its plans for the property. Philips said the board is overstepping its authority, as it’s supposed to attempt to get the most money possible from the land, not judge the merits of the deal.

“I don’t think the board’s decision should be based on what the future plans for the property might be,” Philips said. “I don’t really know what their thinking is.”

Gregoryk, the board’s vice chair, said Industry has not provided any information about its plans in the last three months.

Chino Hills Mayor Ray Marquez said he’s met with Industry Mayor Mark Radecki and consultant Frank Hill but neither would let him in on Industry’s plans.

“We’re in a holding pattern. I want to be optimistic, but I don’t have any factual information,” Marquez said.

Graham Gilles, a real estate broker once hired to sell the land, said he doesn’t understand why the deal is taking so long because Industry has been paying consultants for more than a year to come up with a plan for the property.

“They should have something,” Gilles said.

Jim Gallagher, a member of Save the Tres Hermanos Ranch, said the 400-member group is willing to support Industry if it dedicates the land as open space. The residents of Diamond Bar, Chino Hills and Brea are against proposals from developers to build housing on the land.

Gallagher said he doesn’t believe Industry officials are purposefully delaying the meetings.

“I think they are trying to come up with a type of plan to sell to the oversight board,” he said.

Jason Henry is a staff reporter for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Pasadena Star-News. He covers Pasadena, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech and the City of Industry. Raised in Ohio, Jason began his career at a suburban daily near Cleveland before moving to California in 2013. He is a self-identified technophile, data nerd and a wannabe drone pilot. The 2011 graduate of Bowling Green State University likes to shock his city friends by sharing his hometown's population.

Steve Scauzillo covers environment and transportation for the Southern California News Group. He has won two journalist of the year awards from the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club and is a recipient of the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing on environmental issues. Steve studied biology/chemistry when attending East Meadow High School and Nassau College in New York (he actually loved botany!) and then majored in social ecology at UCI until switching to journalism. He also earned a master's degree in media from Cal State Fullerton. He has been an adjunct professor since 2005. Steve likes to take the train, subway and bicycle – sometimes all three – to assignments and the newsroom. He is married to Karen E. Klein, a former journalist with Los Angeles Daily News, L.A. Times, Bloomberg and the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and now vice president of content management for a bank. They have two grown sons, Andy and Matthew. They live in Pasadena. Steve recently watched all of “Star Trek” the remastered original season one on Amazon, so he has an inner nerd.

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